The answer to most problems across financial services these days seems to be 'digital'. Too few members of staff? Use AI. Clients unhappy with the website? Make it faster, etc. etc.
But these 'solutions' are like using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. Artificial Intelligence is not a like-for-like replacement for human interaction, nor is increasing the speed of your website likely to solve underlying UX/UI problems.
For such an arguably simple word, digital means a lot of things. It can be used to describe tools, channels, people and even ways of thinking.
In this article, we address two very straightforward questions: what do we mean by digital and what are the implications for marketing?
It’s a mindset
We often hear phrases like ‘not very digital’ or ‘we need digital thinking’. In our experience, much of this comes from the C-suite.
The challenge lies in separating digital marketing from digital transformation. Often, the digital marketing lead will become responsible for helping with the latter. Although this varies based on the size of the organisation, we generally believe these are, and should be treated as, distinct functions.
The digital marketing team should be free to focus on the experiences prospects and clients have moving through the customer journey, while a separate team heads up any digital transformation projects.
So, how can we help adjust the C-suite's mindset so they better understand and appreciate the marketing team's digital efforts and expertise?
- Map customer journeys and use data that tells us what channels prospects and clients are using.
- Leverage research that shows how experiences are changing, both inside and outside our industry.
- Run workshops that offer a hands-on, in-person approach to understanding the digital tools, processes and experiences that are available.
A second element of the digital mindset is instilling a culture of collaboration across sales and marketing, with a particular focus on client services.
By mapping customer journeys and understanding the ways that prospects and clients work across multiple channels and touch points, we can understand how teams can (and should) collaborate.
Part of this is ensuring teams establish a common set of tools and processes, so the client's experience is seamless through awareness, engagement, conversion and retention.
This is where education plays an important role. Successful digital marketing requires an increasingly complex set of tools, as well as the skills required to use them.
Some of this can be managed through centralised specialists and devolved channel or segment marketers. However, there is also the need for all marketers to be upskilled in the basics of digital marketing, so they understand the underlying tools, data and insights.
Finally, thinking in an agile manner falls under the banner of mindset. Agile is a philosophy rooted in software development and not limited to digital, but it is a way of thinking that is relevant to marketing teams.
Some of the principles of agile are powerful when it comes to contemplating always-on marketing, involving backlogs, prioritisation and a sprint methodology. This enables you to get your proposition or product in front of customers or users as soon as possible; and, in return, gather insights and build on it.
It's an experience
Our approach to digital has always been strongly rooted in information architecture (IA) and user experience (UX).
Digital has led the way in considering UX across channels – not just digital – and we're seeing that now playing out in the current, overdue focus on customer experience (CX) and journeys. This should help ensure that the brand experience is consistently implemented across all channels and touch points.
One key learning is ensuring that UX is not limited to new website builds, but is an ongoing consideration that informs all new content that’s built for websites. Similarly, UX should be implemented across the complete customer journey – whether that's email, website content search or social journeys.
UX – and really digital design or UI – is a discipline that is less subjective than perhaps we think, and it should definitely be left to the experts.
It's about growth
This is perhaps the loosest interpretation of digital, but it is often the main element of how we grow business through legitimate lead generation, marketing automation and conversions.
Firms with a growth mindset are thinking about how they segment their prospects and existing clients in their CRM.
They are thinking about how to build campaigns that generate leads and guide prospects and clients through automated journeys, which also lays the groundwork for integrating AI into their marketing activities.
In particular, firms are blending their social media strategies with their content production and marketing automation plans to create customer journeys that span the full funnel and result in more effective conversions.
It's innovation
The term digital suggests innovation, and we see, for example, marketing automation as the foundation of the integration of AI. This relies on ensuring that your client data, segmentation, measurement, content and email automation tools are set up correctly, and can form the basis of how you might start using AI to automate, scale and personalise interactions.
As well as the AI element, innovation overlaps with thinking about operating models and your marketing technology architecture.
It's technology
Underpinning digital is the need for a marketing technology stack that provides support across the funnel, from the front-end experiences to the back-end content and data.
We are big fans of technology that is open and connected, allowing the delivery of content and data from single sources across multiple channels and interfaces.
This is intertwined with operating models where the structure of people, processes and technology is visualised to best support global, regional and localised marketing and sales.
A marketing technology platform should consider all the front-end tools across paid and organic social and email, through to the CRM, CMS, marketing automation platforms and data storage. It should also extend to workflows, and the infrastructure for speed and security.
In conclusion
Digital is a widely used phrase with multiple meanings, most of which are reasonable. However, its scope means that a wide range of expertise and resources are required to plan, build and deliver in this area.
If you are interested in understanding more about how your marketing team can harness digital to ensure prospects and clients have a smooth customer journey, or have questions about any other topic in this article, please don't hesitate to get in touch.